The Roches popped into my head. Specifically ‘We’ which opens Maggie, Terre and Suzzy’s debut. I can’t explain but I fell in love with them the first time I heard them. It may have been at WFMU in East Orange, visiting my brother Frank while he was on the air.
I seem to remember Frank playing ‘The Hammond Song’ and mentioning Robert Fripp doing Robert Fripp things in the middle of the song. The Hammond Song is probably their most well-known song. It was even covered by Terry Hall when he was in the Colourfield after his time in the Specials and Fun Boy Three.
I am playing the Hammond Song right now, in fact playing their first album. Their first record was released in June 1979. I probably visited Frank’s show that summer and going back to school in September, I got some strange reactions from classmates who only knew me as a punk rock new waver.
My high school classmate from Harrington Park, the late Jim Carley mentioned the Roches used to sing in his church for the holidays and I do not think he was impressed.
I didn’t much care for their next album, Nerds. It was more of a rock and roll album with various downtown musicians like Fred Smith from Television and Jay Dee Daugherty from the Patti Smith Group among others backing them up.
I did enjoy some of the songs when I finally saw them live at Town Hall. ‘The Death of Suzzy Roche’ was funny and got a few laughs as well as a round of applause. I just played the whole Nurds album and it was better than I remembered. It’s been about 46 years since I last played it and I am certainly not the same person I was when it was released in September 1980.
I also saw the Roches when they played the Bottom Line as the Caroling Carolers singing holiday songs at Christmas time. A few of those songs wound up on We Three Kings, a collection of holiday songs that got a lot of play at Farfetched during that time of end of the year.
It always interested me in the cross-section of people that generally loved the Roches. At Farfetched people would come up to the counter and ask who was playing, and when they found out it was the Roches, they would tell their tales of how much they loved those sisters from New Jersey.
I think my favorite Roches album would be Keep on Doing. Jet Watley and I bonded over that one. It is a little bit more produced than their first one was also produced by Robert Fripp.
I had a crush on Maggie Roche. There was just something about her, her voice hitting those bass notes while her sisters sang higher notes. I always hoped she would wander into arfetched since I think she had lived in the area.
It never happened though and I am quite sure I would have been quite a fan boy if it had happened. Not like I was with Mick Jones from the Clash but close enough. Sadly Maggie passed away a few years ago. I was greatly saddened by the turn of events.
The Roches are no more.
Terre played in Hoboken a couple of times at Jim Mastro’s 501 Social Club, but I could never get it together. There is always a chance that I will get it together should Terre come around again. Suzzy also plays shows with her daughter Lucy Wainwright Roche and that is always a possibility.
Ocean Boyfriend from the song The Troubles. Just a refrain that they sing at the end of that song. I always thought Ocean Boyfriend could be a good name for a band…
Meanwhile at the fruit stand it is as quiet as a tomb. No one around, few friendly faces these days. Marcus, while not such a friendly face but handsome nonetheless, is gone. Jimmy Chile has been reassigned to the major fruit stand.
Brian, who is also handsome as well as friendly, is leaving tomorrow since he was filling in for the housekeeper who went on vacation to Montenegro and is coming back on Monday. A few weeks ago I mentioned to Jimmy Chile that I was so bored I was willing to perform fellatio on Brian just to do something different. Jimmy laughed.
A rock critic essay via Google Gemini
Certain records don’t just enter your life; they ambush your taste and sabotage your carefully curated pretense.
For me, it started with “We,” the stark, dazzling opener on the 1979 self-titled debut by Maggie, Terre, and Suzzy Roche. I was a devout punk, hardened by the church of New Wave, but hearing that record for the first time completely dismantled my musical ego. The epiphany likely hit me in the studio of WFMU back in East Orange, watching my brother Frank command the airwaves. He spun “The Hammond Song”—still the sisters’ undisputed masterpiece—and made a point to mention Robert Fripp doing “Robert Fripp things” right in the dead center of the track. Fripp’s razor-sharp Frippertronics cutting through those gorgeous, alien, three-part Jersey-sister harmonies was pure alchemy. It’s no wonder Terry Hall dragged that song along with him into The Colourfield post-Specials.
Dropping that needle in the summer of ’79 changed the paradigm. Returning to high school that September, my sudden, feverish evangelism for three folk-singing sisters met absolute bewilderment from my punk peers. My late classmate Jim Carley—a Harrington Park local—was thoroughly unimpressed, recalling them merely as the girls who used to sing in his church around the holidays.
When their sophomore effort, *Nurds*, dropped in September 1980, I bounced off it hard. On paper, it was a downtown dream team: Fred Smith from Television and Jay Dee Daugherty from the Patti Smith Group forming a rock-solid, art-punk backing band. Yet, at the time, it felt off. Spinning it now—some 46 years later—it hits entirely differently. Age softens the dogmatic edges of a rock critic; *Nurds* is infinitely better than my teenage snobbery allowed it to be.
Live, they were magnetic. A gig at Town Hall proved their razor-sharp, satirical wit, with “The Death of Suzzy Roche” drawing genuine belly laughs from the room. Years later, I caught them at the Bottom Line performing holiday material as “The Caroling Carolers”—tracks that eventually birthed their essential winter LP, *We Three Kings*, which became a perennial soundtrack to my retail shifts at Farfetched.
The Roches possessed a strange, cross-demographic magnetism. Behind the counter at Farfetched, I watched the most disparate humans imaginable stop dead in their tracks, demand to know what was playing, and launch into glowing, highly personal soliloquies about New Jersey’s finest vocal trio.
My heart, however, belonged to 1982’s *Keep On Doing*—a record I deeply bonded over with Jet Watley. Fripp returned to the board, polishing their acoustic avant-garde into something shimmering and immortal. And then, of course, there was Maggie.
I had a massive crush on Maggie Roche. It was that rich, improbable, floor-shaking contralto anchor—dropping down into the subterranean bass notes while her sisters soared into the ether. Knowing she lived nearby, I harbored a perpetual, foolish hope that she’d casually stroll into Farfetched. Had she walked through that door, I would have dissolved into an unholy display of fanboy reverence, rivaled only by the time I crossed paths with Mick Jones. When Maggie passed away, a vital frequency in American music went quiet forever. The Roches were no more.
These days, the lineage lives on in fragments. Terre occasionally played Jim Mastro’s 501 Social Club in Hoboken, though I kept missing the train; Suzzy tours with her daughter, Lucy Wainwright Roche. There’s a hypnotic refrain at the tail end of their song “The Troubles”—*“Ocean Boyfriend”*—that still rings in my head. I always thought it was a brilliant name for a band that never was.
Meanwhile, reality settles in at the fruit stand, where the atmosphere today is as quiet as a tomb. The cast of characters is evaporating. Marcus—stoic, handsome, and vanished. Jimmy Chile has been reassigned to the major fruit stand. Brian, friendly and striking, finishes his temp stint tomorrow as the housekeeper returns from vacation in Montenegro. A few weeks back, consumed by the sheer, brain-melting boredom of the shift, I cracked to Jimmy Chile that I was so bored I was willing to perform fellatio on Brian just to do something different. Jimmy laughed.
The music plays on, but the room keeps getting quieter.